Worlds Within Worlds...

A blog about comics, yo-yos, anime, juggling, movies, music, esperanto, and any of my other eclectic hobbies...

Friday, April 23, 2004

Tokyopop Plans TV Ads for Manga!!!

Wow! I was not expecting to see this this morning. I have to say this is pretty huge news. The comic news sites had better make a big thing out of this, as IMO this is much more significant than a lot of other stuff going on. It is probably easy for some to ignore since it is "just manga", but comics on TV vs. Icon? I'd say the former is a bigger deal...

I mean, Cartoon Network, MTV, Spike TV, G4, and Tech TV??? That is covering a lot of ground right there. For those curious about the titles involved:

Tokyo Babylon - A 7 volume shoujo series from CLAMP, whose story predates X. It involves a young medium who protects Tokyo from evil spirits with some help.

D.N.Angel - Eight-volume shoujo involving a boy who uncontrolably changes back and forth between his alter-ego as a theif when he sees his crush and when his alter-ego sees HIS crush.
Saiyuki - Nine-volume shonen involving four guys in an adventure inspired (loosely) by the old Monkey King story. While this was technically aimed at guys, it has just as much or more female fans due to the attractiveness of the main characters.

Princess Ai - Three-volume collaboration between Courtney Love and DL Milky (original creators), character designs by Yazawa Ai (of Paradise Kiss fame), with the actual manga done by Misaho Kujiradou. About a princess that tries to become a music star, this is actually also being released in Japan.
Tokyo Tribes - An eleven-volume series about battling street gangs in Tokyo. This is actually Tokyo Tribe 2, which has been renamed. Also, Santa Inoue seems to have a pretty unique style.

So, there you have it! A pretty good variety of titles in there. Interesting to note that a good portion of these are aimed at girls or have a lot of cross-over appeal.